


Changeling Child

by LilyChenAppreciationSociety



Category: Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6391717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyChenAppreciationSociety/pseuds/LilyChenAppreciationSociety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiberius talks modern interpretations of folklore. Livvy is an awesome sister. The Blackthorns are traumatized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changeling Child

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to (http://marcythewerewolf.tumblr.com/post/140360140714/)

“You know, a few hundred years ago, the mundanes would have called me the changing, not Mark or Helen.” Ty tells her out of the blue, one spring afternoon. 

Only a year and some after the war, the wounds are still fresh and Livvy’s shoulders tense at the mention of their lost brother and sister. But this is Ty, not Dru who still asks worriedly if Mark would come back if they were all very good and listened to the Clave, or Tavvy who cried for their father and Helen every night for months. Ty has his own sensibility. 

“What do you mean?” Livvy asks, because that’s how you solve a problem, by figuring out all the variables and then coming up with a solution. 

“Because I’m…” Ty struggles for a word, “Different. And I look different from the rest of you. They would say the fairies stole your real twin from your crib and replaced him with me, and that’s why my eyes never changed. And then they would beat me with sticks or throw me into a fire so I’d leave and bring the real child back.”

“Well, mundanes are rather violent.” Livvy says, and hopes her brother won’t realize the hypocrisy. “But that’s a silly idea, Ty. Everyone knows you aren’t even half faerie. There’d be signs if you were, everyone would be able to tell.” Like they told and judged with Mark and Helen. If Ty was a faerie their first runes would have killed him, and if he was half the Clave would have sent him away too. 

Ty sighs and rus out the door, and Livvy nearly follows him, but he returns quickly, panting and carrying a book. He opens it and shoves it in Livvy’s face. “See?” he says expectantly. 

Livvy reads, a few times to make sure she understands. It’s a new book with plastic on the covers and numbers marching across the bottom of the spine. Diana has been taking them to the public library, like Dad had used to, and Ty has been gobbling up every book he can find. This one is on folklore, one of her brother’s latest interests. He likes reading about the faeries, it makes him felt like he knows more about Mark, as if he can talk to him through the dry texts. 

But this is a mundane book, useless by all accounts, except it talks about changelings, faerie children left in place of human ones, taken to make anew their stagnating bloodlines, the same way Shadowhunters have Ascendants. 

It talks about how changelings and faeries were nonsense, and how it was an excuse, a way to explain away children who acted different.

Children who acted like Ty. 

“This is mundane nonsense.” she declares. “We know changelings are real, and you definitely aren’t one of them.”

“But the mundanes might have called me one.” Ty reasons. “Maybe they would have wanted me sent away instead.” Instead of Mark and Helen. 

There is a dark secret inside of Livvy’s heart and it’s that she knows that the Clave might want to take Ty away anyways, if he grows up and doesn’t change, and he won’t. She knows her brother’s soul, his oddity is as much a part of him as she is. 

“And maybe they would have taken Mark and Helen too.” she says. “For their ears and their actions. Maybe they would have taken all of us, for seeing things they didn’t. Not one of us is really human, Ty.”

Maybe they would have wanted Dru, for the way she makes things up and then insists they’re real, or Jules for his bright eyes, or Emma for her heart of molten steel and quick hands. Mundanes kill each other for the littlest things, Mom had used to read them history books about battles and massacres, all so big and cruel, and at the time she had thought the Nephilim were so much better. 

Ty doesn’t look appeased so she closes the book up and puts it under the table, hiding it away as if that could remove it from his mind.

“We love Mark and Helen, no matter what, and we love Jules as much as he frets, and we love Tavvy, so we love you. Besides didn’t you tell me once that some mundanes used to kill twins too? I was the smaller when we were born, so there’s me gone. Mundanes are stupid, and so is anyone who would take you away, Ty-ty.”

Ty looks at her with his big grey eyes, set into a face just a little too delicate even at eleven for him to look like her twin. “Stupid doesn’t matter, not if they can do it, and not if they’re right.”

“They’re not right, they are stupid, and they can’t. Not without me. We’re changelings together or not at all.” she promises. It’s an empty promise. Solidarity hadn’t protected Mark or Helen. They’re children, and there isn’t much they can do but promise. 

Ty crawls under the table to retrieve his book, and then nods at her, message received. He seems a little placated, but not exactly soothed, and Livvy’s heart breaks. She hates anyone who would ever take anything that’s her to protect, and her brother’s heart is one of those things.


End file.
